Re: [PATCH v4 2/2] usbip: Implement SG support to vhci-hcd and stub driver

From: shuah
Date: Tue Aug 06 2019 - 11:13:59 EST


On 8/6/19 6:31 AM, Suwan Kim wrote:
There are bugs on vhci with usb 3.0 storage device. In USB, each SG
list entry buffer should be divisible by the bulk max packet size.
But with native SG support, this problem doesn't matter because the
SG buffer is treated as contiguous buffer. But without native SG
support, USB storage driver breaks SG list into several URBs and the
error occurs because of a buffer size of URB that cannot be divided
by the bulk max packet size. The error situation is as follows.

When USB Storage driver requests 31.5 KB data and has SG list which
has 3584 bytes buffer followed by 7 4096 bytes buffer for some
reason. USB Storage driver splits this SG list into several URBs
because VHCI doesn't support SG and sends them separately. So the
first URB buffer size is 3584 bytes. When receiving data from device,
USB 3.0 device sends data packet of 1024 bytes size because the max
packet size of BULK pipe is 1024 bytes. So device sends 4096 bytes.
But the first URB buffer has only 3584 bytes buffer size. So host
controller terminates the transfer even though there is more data to
receive. So, vhci needs to support SG transfer to prevent this error.

In this patch, vhci supports SG regardless of whether the server's
host controller supports SG or not, because stub driver splits SG
list into several URBs if the server's host controller doesn't
support SG.

To support SG, vhci_map_urb_for_dma() sets URB_DMA_MAP_SG flag in
urb->transfer_flags if URB has SG list and this flag will tell stub
driver to use SG list.

vhci sends each SG list entry to stub driver. Then, stub driver sees
the total length of the buffer and allocates SG table and pages
according to the total buffer length calling sgl_alloc(). After stub
driver receives completed URB, it again sends each SG list entry to
vhci.

If the server's host controller doesn't support SG, stub driver
breaks a single SG request into several URBs and submits them to
the server's host controller. When all the split URBs are completed,
stub driver reassembles the URBs into a single return command and
sends it to vhci.

Moreover, in the situation where vhci supports SG, but stub driver
does not, or vice versa, usbip works normally. Because there is no
protocol modification, there is no problem in communication between
server and client even if the one has a kernel without SG support.

In the case of vhci supports SG and stub driver doesn't, because
vhci sends only the total length of the buffer to stub driver as
it did before the patch applied, stub driver only needs to allocate
the required length of buffers regardless of whether vhci supports
SG or not.

If stub driver needs to send data buffer to vhci because of IN pipe,
stub driver also sends only total length of buffer as metadata and
then sends real data as vhci does. Then vhci receive data from stub
driver and store it to the corresponding buffer of SG list entry.

In the case of stub driver that supports SG, buffer is allocated by
sgl_alloc(). However, stub driver that does not support SG allocates
buffer using only kmalloc(). Therefore, if vhci supports SG and stub
driver doesn't, stub driver has to allocate buffer with kmalloc() as
much as the total length of SG buffer which is quite huge when vhci
sends SG request, so it has big overhead in buffer allocation.

And for the case of stub driver supports SG and vhci doesn't, since
the USB storage driver checks that vhci doesn't support SG and sends
the request to stub driver by splitting the SG list into multiple
URBs, stub driver allocates a buffer with kmalloc() as it did before
this patch.

VUDC also works well with this patch. Tests are done with two USB
gadget created by CONFIGFS USB gadget. Both use the BULK pipe.

1. Serial gadget
2. Mass storage gadget

* Serial gadget test

Serial gadget on the host sends and receives data using cat command
on the /dev/ttyGS<N>. The client uses minicom to communicate with
the serial gadget.

* Mass storage gadget test

After connecting the gadget with vhci, use "dd" to test read and
write operation on the client side.

Read - dd if=/dev/sd<N> iflag=direct of=/dev/null bs=1G count=1
Write - dd if=<my file path> iflag=direct of=/dev/sd<N> bs=1G count=1


Thanks for the test results.

Were you able to test with USB lowspeed devices?

thanks,
-- Shuah